“Hello World\n”

My first blog post, and I’m doing this at 2:21 am , when tomorrow I have my Chemistry exam. That would tell you how interested I am in Chemistry.  I have 2 chapters and I have barely gone through the first one,  and I’m planning to do the next one tomorrow morning.

Chemistry has always been one subject I never liked. Not all of chemistry, I do like physical chemistry, atleast some of it. But organic chemistry has always been a mood killer. I just dont get the reason as to why we are supposed to learn stuff(reactions, and various other facts)  without understanding it , just for reproducing it on paper for the exams. And this is not limited to chemistry, I have this opinion about some other subjects too. I mean, whats the purpose of rote learning?

Last year, during my preparation for IIT-JEE, I would say I had a great time preparing Physics and Mathematics and well, some part of Chemistry too. JEE tested your concepts , and it went deep. We solved books which explained every detail possible at our level.  Then, we applied these concepts on problems. Problems which you could get only if you had thoroughly grasped the concepts involved. These required mostly logic and tested ones intelligence quite well. But the exact opposite can be said about the state exam, and CET. Most of the stuff in our state text books were half cooked details. Theorems with no proofs, and direct statements, and then facts. Facts which we are supposed to learn and present on paper in the exam. Numericals based on just substituting the values in a direct formula. What I feel about state exams is , you spend time, doing the same thing again and again, at a point it eventually gets learned. But its hardly understood.  I’m not saying that I was intelligent(hell, I did not even clear JEE, and nor did I score exceptionally well anywhere, but that I attribute to my Chemistry marks, which were pathetic everywhere. I never studied chemistry, and still dont.I cant categorize myself into a certain type, but Ill fit in the category between average and intelligent, if you were to ask people who know me.), and I found this system too easy,  just that I’m against this concept. I’m glad that after our batch, the syllabus has been revised, and the state textbooks have been given an overhaul based on the NCERT books, which are much more complete.

Basically this is my point, why study stuff blindly, when its not going to help you do anything after some days. I dont think someone will be able to remember some formula or reaction after somedays if he has studied them this way. It will be in his mind only till the exam, and then, gone! So this is how it has always been with most of the students, study just to get marks. They have just one thing in mind, score a certain X number of marks. Thats it, nothing else.

I have been strongly against this, and so right now, I’m writing this instead of sleeping or roting local textbooks to get marks in tomorrows exams(Pune University does not even take efforts to change mathematics questions , so anyone whos solved the problems again and again will score, well thats intelligence I guess ) . Because I’m not one of those kinds who wants to score marks this way. Yes sure, I do want marks , but I guess ill get 50%  in tomorrow’s paper. Rather, I’m concentrating on subjects I like , and which are actually going to be with me for the rest of my life. Those would be maths, and computers. I want to be a software engineer, why should I waste my time roting things , that I’m gonna forget anyway? Rather, I would spend time developing my programming skills , algorithms, etc which I will need in my whole career.  Its a big risk. I’ll suffer academically, probably getting 60% or so in my first year. And people say companies look at your FE marks for jobs, and it matters for higher ed too. Maybe it does. I hope I cross that barrier of 60-65%  with this attitude(Im too confident ill score awesomely well in maths, computers and electrical). Ill find out this sem, if I find myself going below 60% Ill have to devote more time to these subjects, even if I hate them. I cannot change the system, though I would like to see it change. Give students flexibility to choose subjects, optional ones, compulsary ones. I would rather have taken Economics and studied it properly , because im genuinely interested in it, and could consider it as a future option sometime in my career, than Chemistry which I sure as hell know, I’m not doing anytime in my life.

I guess this is enough for the first post as its about 3, and I’m too sleepy haha. These are my views about education and learning. Many would disagree, as everyone has different opinions. This is just mine, and you are free to choose yours.